Blondie strode through the door, holding a small cardboard box that had once held a dozen bottles of Ernest & Julio Gallo wine, set it on Bullock’s desk, and took a step back, like he didn’t want to be too close when his boss peered inside. The box definitely wasn’t large enough to hold a shipment of coke, although I really had no idea how big a box you’d need for a shipment of coke.

Bullock peered over the edge of the box, looked at Blondie. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“That’s it,” Blondie said, a hint of nervousness in his voice. I think he was worried he might be coming down with a case of “shot messenger syndrome.” It couldn’t be fun giving bad news to a guy like Bullock, who was still looking into the box, incredulous in his ill-fitting suit, still holding Barbie’s pregnant friend Midge in his left hand.

“The fuck is this? An owner’s manual, an apple juice, a box of Kleenex, is this some kind of joke? And whose cell phone is this?” He tossed Midge aside, picked up the phone, threw it back into the box.

Blondie nodded in my direction. “It’s his. I took it off him earlier, put it in the box with the other stuff.”

“You looked in the doors?”

“I looked in the doors, just where Mr. Indigo said the stuff would be. There’s nothing in the doors.”

“I gotta see this for myself.” He left the box on his desk, headed for the door. He told Pockmark to stay with Angie, and ordered me to come with him to the garage.

The tape around my ankle felt as though it was coming loose.

We entered the brilliantly lit garage, where my Virtue took center stage, hood, trunk, and all four doors open. As I came around the car, I saw what a mess it was in. The panels on the insides of all four doors had been removed, exposing the skeletal sheet-metal work and side-impact beams.

“See for yourself,” Blondie said, which was the wrong thing to say, judging by the look Bullock gave him. Bullock looked inside all four doors, ran his hand inside where you couldn’t see, but carefully, so as not to cut himself on the edge of the exposed metal.

“When I couldn’t find it in the doors,” Blondie said, “I took the mats and everything out of the trunk, and there was nothing there. I pulled out the backseat, see if there was anything under there, which there wasn’t, so I put it back. I looked under the front seats, reached up into the springs. I’m tellin’ ya, there’s nothing in this goddamn car.”

Bullock began to pace, five steps one way, spinning around, five steps back. “This is not good,” he said. “This is not good.”